Choosing their talking heads wisely, the filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke arrange the evidence around individual narratives that counter the impersonality of data and statistics. A disillusioned primary-care doctor struggles to make sense of a system that reimburses according to volume rather than outcomes, forcing her to average seven minutes per patient. A young infantryman, injured in Afghanistan, battles to exchange a daunting prescription-pill regimen for alternative therapies to alleviate his post-traumatic stress disorder and nerve damage.

Similarly, the film argues, we can switch from an unsustainable “disease management system” that relies on expensive drugs and often unnecessary medical procedures to one that focuses on prevention over cure. This is a drum that the doctors Andrew Weil and Dean Ornish have been beating for years, and “Escape Fire” cleverly weaves their concerns over poor lifestyle choices into a broader story of corporate lobbying and profit-driven care. Advocating freedom from a system that “doesn’t want you to die and doesn’t want you to get well,” this hard-hitting film leaves us finally more hopeful than despairing.